E3 2004: Spyro: A Hero's Tail - First Look

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Can Spyro return from dragon doom and despair?

By Douglass C. Perry

After three outstanding platfomers on the PlayStation and one ultimately regrettable and forgettable current generation system outing, Vivendi Universal Games' cute little dragon that could finds himself in a platform world that's growing harder, darker and older as we speak. VU Games hopes to answer that very question with Spyro: A Hero's Tail, a 3D platform game that takes a slightly different approach to the series' tradition approach.

An evil Red Dragon has landed in Spyro's backyard, planting Dark Gems across the land, sucking the environment's energy and life out of it, and oddly, it's up to the smallest dragon in the world to kick this guy's ass, and rid the land of the dark gems. But by collecting all of them (in yet - yes -- another collectathon platfomer), he can free the land of their sapping nature -- which transforms its look from dark and weary to bright, lively and springy -- and this beat the Red Dragon's game.

While there is a whole lot of collecting going on, players will get the chance for the first time ever to play as many as six different Spyro characters, ranging from Sparx, Binky, Sgt. Bird, and Hunter, to name a few. Each has his or her own mechanic, look, and feel, as well as an individualistic way of attacking enemies and platform problems. This Spyro isn't as filled with vehicles as the last one, but it does feature tons of cool mini-games. Those include races and flying games and others.

Spyro: A Hero's Tail is four times as big as its predecessor, and it's planned to take twice as long to beat, giving gamers as many as 18-20 hours of playtime. Spyro: A Hero's Tail skews very young, keeping its youthful aura, but also not looking as if it's expanding to attract gamers in their 20s or 30s.

In any case, Spyro: A Hero's Tail does appear as if it's at least in better development hands than the previous game, as it already looks better and offers a far greater variety of playable characters and interesting situations. We'll have more on Spyro the Dragon in the upcoming days.